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Dr.
Mushroom
In His Own
Words
Fungi finally have their own PR man:
Greg Mueller of the Field Museum
As told to Cal Fussman
Re-printed with
permission.
Discover Magazine, July
2005, Vol. 26, No. 7.
How can you tell if a mushroom is poisonous Well,
there are a lot of old wives' tales out there.
Boil them with a silver dollar. If the coin turns black,
they're poisonous. This is one that can really get you
into a lot of trouble.
It's edible if it's growing on wood. Nope, there's a
deadly species of Galerina that grows on wood.
Watch the deer and squirrels and eat what they eat. Au
contraire. There are different digestive systems. A deer
can eat poisonous amanitas that would kill a human.
Unfortunately, there's only one rule that can be applied
to the dinner table: You have to know exactly what
kind of mushroom you've picked to know if it's edible.
And if you don't Well, that's why, between April and
October, my phone rings at three in the morning. A
mycologist knows.
When I was a kid growing up in Southern Illinois, I'd
see mushrooms and think they were something to be
kicked. I didn't know their purpose. Many people have
no idea. When I tell grown men and women what I do,
their eyes generally narrow as if asking a single
question: Why would anybody spend his life studying
mushrooms
So I get to educate them. and usually by the end of the
conversation, they understand why I'm so passionate
about these organisms and other macrofungi. Hey, if
you don't know about something, how can you be
excited about it
Mushrooms are among nature's great recyclers. They
break down dead wood and dead leaves. That may
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seem confusing on the surface. A mushroom may pop
up in a week, a year — or maybe every few years. But
you do see a lot of dead leaves and decomposing wood
out there.
When you think of a mushroom, you have to see it like
the apple on an apple tree. It's the fruit body that
produces the spores. Most of the mushroom is growing
underground and forming what's called the mycelium.
That's the part that interacts with the environment and
decomposes things.
Ever pull up the bark of a decomposing tree
Sometimes you'll see this white stuff. That's the
mycelium of some mushroom or another macrofungus
at work. It's giving off enzymes that are breaking down
the cellulose and the lignin. Without mushrooms and
other fungi, we'd have miles and miles of logs. Without
mushrooms, there'd be no space for anything to grow.
If you're interested in conservation ecology, this is
exactly where you ought to start. Mushrooms are not
only critical components in recycling nutrients back
into the soil for plants and animals to use; many form
an obligate symbiosis with trees in the forest.
Oak, spruce, pine, fir, eucalyptus — none of them can
grow and survive without their appropriate fungi. The
roots of each tree and the mycelium combine to form a
sheath around the roots. The fungus brings water and
nutrients into the trees, and it feeds on the excess
sugars produced by the trees. The system is so well
balanced, we call it mutualism. The tree cannot get the
necessary nutrients and water without the fungus, and
the fungus cannot grow without its carbon source.
People in forest management are now recognizing how
critical this symbiosis is. In order to manage what's
above the surface, they have to take into account what's
going on beneath it.
The most recent data have shown there is a flow of
nutrients from one type of tree to different types of
trees through these mycelial networks. Ideas are in a
state of flux right now as we try to figure out exactly
what's going on. But one thing is sure: Analyzing trees
in an isolated way is the wrong way to go.
There's a timber tree out in the Pacific Northwest
called the Douglas fir. It's one of the most essential
trees in the area from an economic standpoint and one
of the most important forest trees from an ecological
standpoint. There are most likely nearly 1,000 species
of fungi that react with this tree. If you pull any one
out, will you have problems Is there some kind of
ecological redundancy If we lose half, will the
remainder work fine Are different fungi playing
different roles in the protection against stress Are
they fail-safe systems We don't know. But from a
conservation standpoint, these are critical questions.
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You can get detailed maps of the distribution of almost
every bird and mammal and how they cluster together.
Try requesting maps for fungi. The answer you'll get is
"Ask me that in 15 years." I'm trying to understand
patterns, distribution, and diversity. I'd be a very busy
guy even if I wasn't fielding up to 10 calls a week from
people wondering exactly what they put in their
spaghetti sauce.
Sometimes the calls come in the afternoon. A parent or
a teacher will see a kid with a mushroom in his or her
mouth and freak out. It's mostly adults who get into
the really nasty stuff. But kids can. I've seen the deadly
amanita — Amanita virosa — under swing sets in parks.
If someone eats this amanita, the amatoxin will stop
RNA synthesis. That means it will inhibit cell division.
The toxin will go about destroying cells throughout the
body, but because blood circulates through the liver
and kidneys, that's where the toxins accumulate.
Onset of symptoms is between 12 and 24 hours. you get
severe gastrointestinal problems. there's vomiting,
diarrhea, and severe cramping. This will go on for a
couple of days if there's no treatment. But then it will
subside. You think, "Oh, I'm getting better." Then two
days later, bango! Worse pain. If there's no appropriate
treatment, you're dead in a couple more days. Cause of
death is usually liver failure. We don't have an antidote
for the amatoxins. We give activated charcoal — this
slurry stuff. It absorbs the toxins and then passes
through the system. We can also give dialysis. If you
filter the blood, you reduce the level of the toxin. Last
resort is a liver transplant. Luckily, nobody's died on
my watch — although there have been people who've
gotten so sick they wished they had.
In the last three years, we've gone high tech in order to
do triage very quickly. We've created an online Hotmail
account called Shrooms-911. Now when there's a call
from a hospital to the poison center in Illinois,
instructions are given for taking digital images and
having them e-mailed in. Wherever in the world my
colleagues and I are, we can log on to Shrooms-911 and
give a quick ID. We can recognize the mushroom and
say, "You've got to get this person treatment" or "This
is fine. Tell Mom to relax."
If I can't identify it immediately, I can go to the
herbarium at the Field Museum and pull out
specimens in our collection to determine a match. Our
herbarium is an organized collection of plants and
fungi. In it we have more than 150,000 specimens of
fungi from around the world. The majority are
mushrooms, but lichens and microfungi are also
included.
You know how people have plant collections when
they're young They take a plant, stick it in their book,
and let it dry out. We don't do that with mushrooms.
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Flattened mushrooms aren't very interesting. We use
food dehydrators — the same machinery used to make
dried apples or bananas. They blow air at low heat and
dry the mushroom out. So we've got shriveled-up
mushrooms. They don't look as beautiful as they did
when picked, but when I add to the the collection, I
always take photographs and describe the color and
size. If I need to identify a mushroom that's been sent
in, I can search for a match by taking piece of dried
mushroom in our herbarium, rehydrating it, and
putting it under the microscope. All the features are
there. We can also extract DNA. So these specimens
have a lot of value.
Of course, I need to know what I'm trying to match.
That's why I always tell people: "When you collect
mushrooms, save at least one in a brown paper bag in
the refrigerator. If there is a problem after you've
eaten, then we'll have a readily identifiable specimen."
People eat these nice meals at 6 or 7 p.m. At 8,
something feels wrong. Around 10 or 11, they're in the
emergency room, and a state trooper is running a
sample of the mushroom to my office. Maybe I get the
mushroom at 1 or 2 in the morning and put it under
the microscope. One time, the only remnants were in
the casserole. So I was picking through the casserole
looking for the mushrooms. It can be worse. If there's
no other way . . . well, it's not too hard to guess what
the last stop is.
Back in the days of Caesar they had mushroom tasters.
Now there's a job for you, huh If the tasters lived, then
Caesar would eat the mushrooms.
In the mid-1860s, an ex-Army captain named Charles
McIlvaine decided that he would spend his retirement
tasting mushrooms. He wanted to judge his body's
reaction to the mushrooms he tasted, so he didn't try
them within a day or two of each other. He kept
voluminous notes. He ended up writing a book called
One Thousand American Fungi. What he learned has
stood the test of time — although if you follow his book
to the letter you might get yourself into trouble. He was
fortunate to have had an iron stomach, and he died of
natural causes. He obviously knew better than to
sample an amanita.
Amanitas contain one of the deadliest poisons found in
nature. The mushroom starts as an egg-shaped button
that resembles a small puffball. This breaks open as the
mushroom grows. Once it's developed an amanita will
be gilled with parasol-shaped caps. They come in
white, yellow, red, and brown. But the gills are white.
They don't call Amanita virosa the destroying angel for
nothing. One cap can kill a person.
Galerina has the same deadly compound as Amanita
virosa. It's a small brown mushroom that grows on
wood. The problem with Galerina is that it's known to
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grow intermixed with honey mushrooms, which are
good edibles. If you're willing to inspect closely, the
two are easy to tell apart. If you cut the cap off, put it
on a white piece of paper and let it sit overnight. The
honey mushrooms will reveal white spores, Galerina
has brown spores.
Then you've got false morels. Morels are some of the
best edible mushrooms. They look like honeycombs,
and they're hollow inside. False morels resemble the
shape of a brain. They're solid inside. They have
monomethylhydrazine inside them, which is basically
rocket fuel. There have been fatalities, but others have
eaten them and survived. Studies indicate that the
toxins are cumulative. So you can eat them a few times
without problems, and you have no idea you're eating
your last supper.
The two most commonly eaten mushrooms that you
don't want to eat around Chicago are the jack-o'-
lantern and the green-spored lepiota. The jack-o'-
lantern is pumpkin colored and grows in clusters on
wood. It has gills coming down the stem. It actually
glows, but the green glow is so faint in the light that
you can't see it. People think they look like
chanterelles, which are delicious edibles and also have
pleasant smell. But if you see the two together, you'll
never confuse them. Chanterelles have flat-edged
interconnecting ridges or wrinkles instead of knifelike
gills.
The green-spored lepiota grows in yards or grassy
areas. It's a big mushroom that grows in a fairy ring.
It's white and looks very innocent and pure. As the
mushroom matures, the gills turn green. A couple of
lepiotas are great edibles. but the green-spored lepiota
will give you major diarrhea and vomiting. You'll have
to check into hospital for dehydration. Depending on
your personality, you'll either be embarrassed or you'll
have a great story.
When you travel around the world, you find there are
mycophiles or mycophobes. People tend to either love
mushrooms or be fearful of them. Folks from the U.K.
for instance, are generally not into eating mushrooms.
But collecting and preparing mushrooms is a big
pastime in France, Russia, and China.
I'm not overly adventurous when I'm eating
mushrooms, but there a are a few that I love. The black
trumpet — it's also called the horn of plenty — is one of
my favorites. It's hard to see because it's only a couple
of inches tall. You'll have to get down on your hands
and knees to find one. It looks like a black hearld's
trumpet and has this wonderful nutty flavor. I don't
like to hide the flavor, so I just sauté them with a little
olive oil.
Puffballs can grow as big as volleyballs and are usually
between a forest and a grassy area. You find them on
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bike trails. You can get multiple meals out of one. You
can cut it up and put it in pasta. Or if you want to have
a little fun, you can make a puffball pizza. Slice the
mushroom into a nice crust, put on cheese and tomato
sauce, then toss it in the oven and bake.
The golden chanterelle has a beautiful orange color. It's
usually found in oaks, but it can be in pine woods also.
I get a a lovely apricot smell from the chanterelle. It
goes nicely with light sauces.
Boletes are soft and squishy with a nice texture that
will stand up to the sauce in pasta. They're found either
in oaks or pines — often in people's yards. We had a
case where a guy got sick after eating them, and the
emergency room called. It took us a while to figure out
why. This is a good, edible mushroom. Finally, we
tracked the problem to its source and discovered that
his neighbor had put an herbicide on the yard the week
before. The mushroom had absorbed the herbicide,
and the guy had herbicide poisoning. So I like to throw
in my "know thy neighbor's lawn" caveat.
Oh, and don't let me forget morels. They come in
springtime — in May around the Chicago area. Some
say you can find them around dead elms. Morel
hunters have their secrets. I'm not a good morel
hunter, but I have some friends who take care of me. I
like them in omlets. Sometimes we chop them up and
put them in a roux with flour and milk and then pour it
over melba toast. Ohhhhhhhh, so fine.
I'm telling you, what this world needs is a little
Mushroom Public Relations 101.
We're trying to make the information more accessible.
We have a virtual herbarium the Field Museum
developed along with the Morton Arboretum and the
Chicago Botanic Garden. You can find data for about
90,000 plant specimens. We started with just plants of
the Chicago area — www.vplants.org — and we're
expanding to include an online field guide of
mushrooms. There will be a species page for all the
mushrooms in the region where you can find an image
and a short description. There'll be a distribution map,
and you'll be able to read about the ecology. We're
trying figure out ways to unlock our data through the
Web.
Once you get started with mushrooms, you'd better be
careful. You can get hooked pretty easily. Look what
happened to me. I start out an ordinary kid in
Belleville, Illinois, kicking mushrooms and growing up
to play baritone horn in the high school marching
band. Who would've known
I meet this beautiful girl named Betty strolling across
campus at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
We get a job watering orchids and other plants at a
greenhouse, and she introduces me to a mycologist.
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Double bingo! I get the girl and a course on fungi.
I earn my undergraduate degree at Southern Illinois
and a master's in mushrooms too. Then Betty and I
head to the University of Tennessee for my doctorate.
Next thing you know, we're hunting for mushrooms in
Sweden while I work on my postdoctorate. And soon
we're both at the Field, working an office apart. She's
managing the scanning electron microscope facility
that allows me to look at spores big time in 3-D. Then
one day we're scavenging in a forest in Costa Rica, less
than a football field apart, when I shout for her in
shock. It's amazing that I can even get her name off my
lips. She hurries over, and there it is: Macrocybe titans,
the largest mushrooms in the world, more than three
feet wide and in perfect condition. Nothing comes near
this mushroom — neither bird nor insect — because of
its cyanide odor. The two of us share a unique moment
staring at this wonder of nature. And that's what love
is. So be careful once you get started. You could end up
like me, owning a few mushroom ties.
Copyright © 2005, Colorado Mycological Society.
All Rights Reserved.
Last update: 07-Dec-2005
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